This tutorial (recorded using SnagIt) is intended to introduce users to OpenRefine, its basic features, and to act as a springboard for a digital humanities project/study that involves great quantities of data. The dataset used in this Skillshare was generated from New York Public Library’s (NYPL’s) crowdsourcing project What’s on the Menu?, where members of the public transcribed menu items from the 1840s to the present. Cleaning datasets is often the first step that needs to be taken when using public datasets, as they are typically messy, and OpenRefine can help users accomplish large-scale data cleaning (and data manipulation).
Overall, this Skillshare intends to introduce users to basic features of OpenRefine in order to make datasets more discernable (particularly for digital humanists who often use public humanities datasets), readying them for further analysis.